• Chainweasel
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    1 month ago

    I wish.
    In Idiocracy the public wanted the smart people in charge, President Camacho even stepped aside when he knew he was unqualified compared to Joe.
    In whatever the hell this is, the public demonizes intelligence.

    • @dipcart@lemmy.world
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      761 month ago

      Carl Sagan, in 1995:

      I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

      The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance

      • @Hasherm0n@lemmy.world
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        531 month ago

        Isaac Asimov in 1980:

        There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

      • @Serinus@lemmy.world
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        61 month ago

        People have been saying, “I’m worried because the kids are so dumb” since the dawn of time. This has a couple extra grains of truth thrown in, but not much that wasn’t already apparent.

    • @BranBucket@lemmy.world
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      421 month ago

      This.

      It’s an absolutely unfair comparison for Camacho, who was a pretty good leader considering the setting of the film.

    • @Laereht@lemmy.world
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      81 month ago

      I guess it shows what I believe: that eventually humanity will tire of punching ourselves if we don’t cause our own extinction first.

  • @grue@lemmy.world
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    821 month ago

    Posts like this are pure cope. Idiocracy was better than the actively malicious government we have now.

    • @Damage@feddit.it
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      241 month ago

      They were stupid but not evil.

      Nobody in the movie sought to oppress others for their own gain.

  • @No_Money_Just_Change@feddit.org
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    291 month ago

    Sadly no.

    Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho changed his believes when presented with evidence of the contrary and stepped down from power as soon as someone more suitable was found

    We are in a timeline where the president of idiocracy would be the better option

  • @RangerJosey@lemmy.ml
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    251 month ago

    Oh we’re there. Remember the Covidiots shitting out their intestinal lining to own the libs?

    We been there.

      • @GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        31 month ago

        They were taking ivermectin, an antiparasitic, for COVID. Then, they were posting pictures of “worms” coming out of their asses that just so happened to actually be their intestinal lining.

  • @yesman@lemmy.world
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    241 month ago

    Idiocracy usually gets criticized for it’s embrace of eugenics. But today I’m going to point out that the future envisioned by the movie is 100% right wing. Not since Red Dawn has a move more closely aligned with reactionary politics.

    What’s the conflict of the movie? Stupidity. That’s the cause of all the problems. Not institutions, not systems. Even corporate greed and mismanagement are down to dumb executives. Because if smart and qualified people were in charge, there would be no problems with corporations. Government? Same story, we just need an average white guy with dictatorial power to come in rescue the DEI hires.

    • Kairos
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      91 month ago

      embrace of eugenics

      I genuinely don’t know where this comes from? Did I miss something in the movie?

      • TheObviousSolution
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        131 month ago

        Recognizing a trend versus being a proponent of the most horrible to approach it is an Idiocracy level leap in logic. The movie does not endorse eugenics in any way. At most, it displays a caricature of things, like genetics, as movies are apt to do.

      • @uienia@lemmy.world
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        111 month ago

        Because its premise is that stupid parents exclusively get stupid children, and stupid parents gets more children than intelligent parents. That is how the world ends up as it is in the movie.

        But that is of course not how intelligence works. Stupid parents can get intelligent children, otherwise intelligent people would never have existed in the first place.

        Of course that doesn’t make the movie embrace eugenics. It is just an unimportantfictional premise meant to explain why the world is at it is in the movie.

        • @Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          But that is of course not how intelligence works.

          But intelligence is influenced by genetics. Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%, with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.

          NYWATDBIDSYWV

            • The movie doesn’t imply 100%.

              The hypothesis they use is that stupid people have more kids and become the majority. It shows the genetic selection occuring over many generations.

            • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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              21 month ago

              Add in the effects of poverty, poor nutrition, lack of education, then top off with peer pressure and you get close to 100%

        • Kairos
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          21 month ago

          Oh hmm. Does it mention genetics? It could be more of a cultural thing.

          • @Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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            81 month ago

            The way I perceived it, that’s exactly what it was. Yeas, the kids of stupid people are stupid but I don’t recall it being specified it was genetic. The sequence in the movie just made me think it was upbringing and lack of education.

            Stupid people on average will have stupider kids, if their parents believe education to be a prissy intellectual thing for gay liberals and not for good decent hard working people like us.

    • @Asafum@feddit.nl
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      191 month ago

      Not only is he not just some “thumbs up guy” he’s “libertarian” president of Argentina Javier Gerardo Milei… Who is currently doing a bang up job of ruining his country too.

      We live in the worst timeline. :/

  • @Diddlydee@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    The rest of the world is watching America through splayed fingers, shaking heads with embarrassment.

    • @Madison420@lemmy.world
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      41 month ago

      I dunno but I really hoped sometime else was going to point out how shitty that chainsaw looks, I’d also love to see Elon cut down a tree without an Internet connection to look it up.

  • SatansMaggotyCumFart
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    41 month ago

    I can’t believe Elon pulled out his hooker chasin’ chainsaw on stage.

    That thing would probably break if you tried to cut a log with it.